


Its a Wonderful Life

by Scribe32oz



Category: DCU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 15:16:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14621421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe32oz/pseuds/Scribe32oz
Summary: One of the possible origns of the Joker - with influences from Alan Moore's Killing Joke





	Its a Wonderful Life

Gotham is my mother.   
  
I see her as she is, diseased and reeking with putrescence from every manhole pore, coughing out toxic fumes of apathy and desperation. She’s the hooker on the strip that will let you do her for ten bucks or a cigarette because it’s all the game she can muster. Fishnet stockings held together by nail polish, surrounding cellulite heavy thighs like the mesh around a rotting ham. She reeks of desperation and denial, unable to accept the sad truth she’s barely woman anyone’s eyes and those who pay to use her, can’t do better.    
  
To them, she’s a life support system for a snatch.    
  
That’s the real joke isn’t it? People live in Gotham not because they want to but because they can’t do better. The ones who can have already fled to Metropolis, Starling, Coast City or New York. Why stay here to be chum for the sharks trolling the pavement. Sharks who wear sharp suits, thinking that made them something. You can slap a 1000 dollar suit on a pig and everyone will still see a pig. Mobsters, rapists, serial killers and freaks, were Gotham’s real crop. Maggots sleazing out of her rancid crack.    
  
Well boys and girls, the pièce de résistance has arrived.    
  
I get the joke you see. I understand my place in the world and Gotham and I understand each other. I will happily get between the whore’s legs and give her one last poke before I carve her into fish bait or maybe pieces to make shawarma. Now that’s funny and I’m all about the funny. Give people a joke, a smile, a little dance on head of a pin and they’ll chuckle while you blow their brains out or make them drink bleach.    
  
It’s a wonderful life when your biggest decision of the day is which will be more fun.    
  
Hello Gotham, wait til you get a load of me.    
  


* * *

  
Walking through the meandering paths of the Gotham City Zoo, the man in the trench coat and the wide brimmed hat seemed out of place in the sea of children, the overwhelmed parents, garishly clothed tourists and zookeepers wearing Prozac induced smiles on their faces. It was a Saturday, so the crowds were out in force, descending on the helpless denizens of the zoo, needing to gawk and stare at creatures who had even less freedom then they did.    
  
He took in the smell of popcorn and peanuts, riding the underlying stench of dung and piss that people seemed to ignore whenever they were in a zoo. Put the same smell anywhere else and they’d be bitching in seconds. Of course, that was the trick the mind played on you, the little traps set in the brain called conditioning. There were no such traps in his mind, not anymore. The last of them had been burned away in an acid bath.    
  
He stepped out of the bath, purified from his past and baptised in chaos. If he were Jewish, there would have been a ceremony.    
  
“Look mommy,” a kid cried out, an obnoxious little shit with chubby cheek that made his eyes disappear into his face, “a clown.”    
  
The woman glanced his way and took note of him, uncertain what she was seeing.    
  
Pulling off his hat, he bowed dramatically and the sight of him, made other children stop in their tracks, tugging at their mommies and daddies, demanding to see the clown.    
  
“Well hello there boys and girls,” he grinned, pulling back ruby red lips that revealed his perfect teeth. Unbuttoning the front of his trench coat, he revealed a purple suit. The sales girl he’d liberated it from called the colour ‘berry’ but he suspected it was an excuse to slap a fruit on something so you could charge anything you like.    
  
Just ask Steve Jobs.    
  
They gathered around him, showering him with false adoration because he looked like one of those out of work actors who played clowns at their birthday parties. Poor saps who told themselves, they were still honing their craft, displaying the various disciplines of clowndom such as Pierrot, Harlequin and Auguste, like it makes a difference to a bunch of snotty five year olds.   
  
“Would you like to see a trick?” He asked, winking to the parents.   
  
The thunderous roar of high pitched voice rose and fall like a soprano reaching the crescendo of an opera’s great aria. Adjust the pitch a little, he thought and they would be screaming. So he reached for the dial…   
  
…which in this case was a .45 calibre gun.   
  
Still believing the weapon to be a prop, the children seemed oblivious but uncertainty became to creep into the eyes of the parents as he took aim at one of the zookeeper's, standing next to a five year old and her parents. The explosion of sound that caused by a large calibre gun destroyed any doubt that the gun was a prop. The bullet slammed into the cheesy pith helmet and blew out the back of the young lady’s skull. Blood and viscera splattered over the people behind her but their screams were drowned out by everyone else’s.    
  
“That’s called Taking the Pith! Get it? Taking the Pith?” He hollered to them as they fled like the tide retreating from the shore. “Come on that’s funny!”    
  
He saw security running towards him, their guns drawn. Reaching into the pockets of his coat, he retrieved two green glass bottles, shaped like juggler's balls. Tossing the first, the bottle shattered spectacularly against the pavement, its liquid spreading out with the glass fragments. No sooner than it had made contact with the air, the green ooze started to hiss, covering the area with a fine layer of gas.    
  
“Come back little children! You’re going to miss my Chasing the Green Fairy trick!” He hollered after the fleeing crowds.    
  
Stepping over Khloe, the dead zoo keeper so named by her blood splattered name tag, he threw the other bottle, this time into the crowd. It impacted with a crash though the sound was muted by the stampede of feet and everyone’s screams. The same green fog rose in the thickest part of his departing audience spreading over them quickly. 

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the security guards who charged in to the rescue were now an untidy collection of bodies, strewn across the grounds. The ones who weren’t dead were still twitching, their mouths frothing. Dusting his hands exaggeratingly, he admired his handiwork as the poisoned gas went to work on the families that had come out for the day. He wished he had a canvas, what a delightful picture it would have made.    
  
With an almost leisurely pace, he walked over to the leopard’s cage a few steps away from the main walk and peered through the bars at the big cat puzzled by all the brouhaha.    
  
“Guess what,” he grinned leaning forward, eyeing the bodies that were piling up a short distance away. “It’s _feeding_ time.”    
  


* * *

  
Sirens screamed in the distance, signalling their approach with a banshees wail.    
  
Around him, the predators circled with indecision, trying to discern what sort of animal was he? He was not prey, they knew that much. There was not the tasty scent of fear common to the terrified wafting from him. Instead he gave off a much different scent and the tang of it made them hesitate. Whatever, he was, he gave them their freedom and the chance to feed.   
  
He wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t going to poke the bear so to speak, not when Yogi was crunching on the remains of a dead zookeeper so he skedaddled away from the carnage he unleashed. The path was covered in bodies, a grisly tableau of blood, light pastel clothing and Dora lunchboxes. Gruesome but also eclectic, he thought. The leopards, the lions and just about every animal with teeth he’d freed was now feasting on human flesh and with the approach of the cops, he decided that he was done for the afternoon.    
  
Reaching inside his coat, he strolled casually to a map of the zoo in the middle of the pathway and searched for the big garish letters that said ‘YOU ARE HERE’.    
  
“I sure am,” he cackled with laughter as he pinned a playing card over the words.    
  
Once completed, he turned to his audience, the dead bodies and the wildlife on the loose and declared loudly, “Thank you, thank you! You’ve been a marvellous audience. Maybe we’ll do this again sometime…well maybe some of us will do it again sometime.” He snorted, eyeing the blood splattered across the cobblestone.    
  
His eyes rested on an upended stroller, the baby inside taken away by a parent or a lion. It didn’t really matter one way or another but the stroller did remind him of something…   
  


* * *

  
I remember things sometimes. Like that damn stroller. Memory is a wife that never forgets and brings shit up at the worst time for maximum impact. I remember standing at Wal Mart, looking at a parking lot full of the damn things, with their colours so vibrant it made your eyes burn. All of them covered with baby ducks, baby, chicks, cows and other cutesy animals. How come no one ever uses a maggot for a change? It’s a baby too. Discrimination, that’s what it is.    
  
Oh but I digress.    
  
I remember the stroller, arguing about whether it should be pink or blue or neutral. Neutral being yellow or purple. I like purple. I think we ended up choosing purple. We. I think of we and immediately a face appears, a face with a smile, forgiving blue eyes and strawberry blond hair. The face creates pain like a sword through the heart, it makes me want to scream, makes me forget the joke. It takes but a fraction of a second for that face to do what bullets, grim, cowled monsters and acid burning baths cannot. It cripples me.    
  
Remembering the face puts me in a foul mood and the only way to black it out, is to find someone to kill, to superimpose the face in my mind with their face of terror just before I put a bullet in it. If I used the gas, they even smile for me before the end. It is the anathema I need to chase her away, to make me forget. If I kill enough people, if I bathe the world in blood and horror, if I see a million faces staring back at me with terror, their legs wet with piss and shit, then maybe, just maybe I might even forget her name.    
  
_Jeanie_.    
  
  


* * *

  
Christ, she was beautiful.    
  
Doctor Frank Carroll pretended to be engrossed by the report on his laptop screen but in truth he was peering surreptitiously over the top of his steel rimmed glasses, drinking in the sight of young blond technician hunched over a pile of paperwork at her station. She was a gorgeous thing, with shiny blond hair hanging over her shoulders, ample, firm tits pressed against the bench and full lips he wanted to taste the minute she walked into his office.    
  
She’d been a walk in, one of those eager college graduates who showed up at the main building of Axis Chemical Plant, handing in her resume, unaware that the tank top and tight skirt she had on was all she needed to land a job. He’d caught a glimpse of her but that was enough. Once Chrissy was in his mind, he hadn’t been able to think of anything else. He wanted desperately to see her again but he had a problem; he already had an assistance.    
  
Driven by lust, he fired Jason the very next morning, oblivious to the man’s pleas that he had a pregnant wife, weeks away from delivery. The words barely registered because Frank’s head was too filled with the need to nail prime USD grade college pussy. Besides, there was something about Jason that was always off and this was as good an excuse as any to get rid of him. He pink slipped Jason by day’s end and called Chrissy up in the morning to offer her a job as his new lab technicians.    
  
Almost immediately, he had no cause to reject the decision. The girl was all smiles and giggles, brightening up the lab with her cheery disposition and muting the stench of chemicals with the scent of fresh, strawberry soap. Frank adored her and barely gave a thought to Jason. So what if he was a fifty year old man with a wife and two kids? It didn’t matter. You only live once right?   
  
Tonight they were working late and everything was going according to plan.    
  
At this time of night, it was just the two of them and security. He made her work late under the guise of some non-existent analysis that had to be completed for tomorrow morning. Management had a big meeting coming up and the needed the results of this test, he’d told her. She was eager and single, with no commitment to hinder the overtime. All he had to do was invite her to dinner, preferably near a hotel somewhere, ply her with enough drinks to make her want to make her suggestible.    
  
It was all so perfect.    
  
“I’m done Frank,” Chrissy chose to speak up at that moment, rising up from her chair and stretching her arms back over her head, like a cat waking up from a deep sleep.    
  
He tore his eyes away from her, not wanting to be caught staring and instead glanced at his monitor screen and switched off the game of Solitaire he had been playing. “Just in time, I thought we might be able to grab some dinner.”   
  
She beamed at him, soft lips stretching over her perfect white teeth. “I’d be hap….”   
  
She never finished the sentence. The crack of a gunshot tore through the stillness of the laboratory a split second before he was wearing Chrissy’s brains all over his lab coat. Frank felt blood and gore splattered across his face, drenching his skin, washing his glasses.    
  
“Uh….my….god…” he managed to stutter as she sank to her knees and felt on her ruined face.    
  
Standing behind her, still holding the handgun was a man in a trench coat and purple suit. The glaring lights of the laboratory made the white of his skin and the ruby red lips even harsher, like he was staring at a clown. Even though he was smiling, it did not reach his eyes. Those were staring at him, like the lifeless eyes of a shark. Despite his horror at Chrissy’s blood spreading across the tile floor, one thing registered in Frank’s mind, he knew this man.    
  
“Jas…”   
  
“No, no,” he waved his gun at Frank as he slowly approached the pudgy chemist. “We don’t use that name anymore.”   
  
Frank retreated, trying to comprehend what was happening. In the back of his mind, a voice filled with dread was whispering, _you fired him_. _You fired a man with a pregnant wife so you could get laid. Karma's a bitch man._   
  
He stepped over the dead young woman, the one who had set the wheels in motion to his great epiphany, to begin with. “Hey did you still want a poke?” He asked Frank. “She won’t be able to give you head but there’s still enough warmth in her snatch to give you a good fuck.”    
  
Frank almost threw up at the thought. “Please,” he started to whimper. “I know I did wrong. I messed up but don’t do this…I have a wife and children.”   
  
Hearing Frank blubber made him laugh. He stood there seeing the man disintegrate into a quivering of pathetic grovelling. “Everybody dies Frank, can’t stop that from happening. You know a pregnant woman can get shot by some random guy in the park? Yep, straight through the heart. All she was doing was sitting on a park bench, trying to escape the rat hole apartment her old man moved her into because they couldn’t afford a better place after he was fired. Isn’t that a kicker?” He started to laugh.    
  
“Jesus, I’m sorry,” Frank was weeping as he closed in, gun still in his gloved hand.    
  
“Nope, not my name either Frank but _good_ try.” With that, he brought down the barrel of the gun on the back of Frank’s head. The man went down without a sound, collapsing on the floor next to his almost mistress.    
  
Night security was presently bleeding out in two different parts of the plant, their throats slit from ear to ear so he didn’t need to rush.    
  
“Now,” he said leaning to pick Frank up by the arms. “Where is that little ol’ industrial microwave?”    


* * *

  
I’ve only seen the Bat once.    
  
He descended like the closing curtains following the final act of my previous existence, the coup de grâce of what had been a truly bad day.    
  
Sometimes, I don’t know whether to hate him for making me what I am or to thank him for freeing me from all I had been. He baptized me in acid, burned away every last piece of identity I had and gave me the freedom to build any reality I wanted. I should thank him for that.    
  
Maybe I’ll buy him latte one day to show him how much I care.   
  


* * *

  
Frank’s screams were like a siren song, a chorus of screams followed by a shrieking aria that descended into whimpering outro. He placed Frank’s phone against the cool metal of the industrial microwave, recording every perfect note until the loud buzz of the timer signalled the end of the performance. The microwave went silent and so did Frank. He opened the door and was hit with the aroma of cooked meat and scorched blood.   
  
What was left of Frank was unrecognisable. All that remain was flesh baked to a crisp, hollowed eye sockets cradling the goo that had been the man’s eyeballs. He took in the aroma and let it fill his lungs, thinking that an apple in Frank’s mouth would complete the scene. Just for posterity, he captured the image on Frank’s IPhone. For the man's family course.   
  
His work done for the night, he turned and walked out of the building, stepping unto a long walkway suspended over the large filtration tanks where the grey water from the plant would be processed. The tanks would attempt to remove as much chemical residue as possible before flowing the treated water into the sewer system. He paused and looked over the railing, staring at his faint reflection in the green, murky surface.   
  
The moon was high, illuminating the deserted chemical plant like some magical wonderland of shadows, gleaming windows and smoke stacks striving to reach the grey clouds. The lingering scent of Frank was being diminished by the smell of fetid water and acrid layers of chemicals battling for dominance. The place settled with the silence of the tomb as if the world was holding its breath and the engine of inevitability was driving the moment towards its conclusion.   
  
When the high tensile wire wrapped itself around him, he wasn’t surprised. Fascinated he watched the wire circle him, carried by a shred of black metal shaped like a bat. When it tightened around him and spun him around, he started to giggle. He made no effort to struggle but instead slipped his fingers into the nearest pocket and fished around for the wire cutters he’d brought with him. By the time he was facing forward, he’d already snapped the line in half, causing it to recoil with a loud twang.   
  
“Sorry I came prepared,” he said with a grin.   
  
The dark shape, all cloak and swagger took lightning steps and before he knew it, felt his nose shatter in a powerful jackhammer strike. The pain made him laugh harder, even as he fell on his ass. “Now that’s more like it! All that black and leather, I guess this is your big O right? Pounding bad guys like some superhero version of Christian Grey. That’s what gets you off?”   
  
The Bat hauled him onto his feet and in voice of brittle glass demanded, “Why?”   
  
“Why?” He cocked his head, trying to see the eyes hidden by the white lenses on the cowl and failing. He went for the switchblade in his other pocket and got no further than that before a dark gauntlet snapped around his wrist and received another punch in the face for his efforts.   
  
Seeing stars, _they were so pretty_ , he laughed out loud and answered, “why not? Shit happens? Sometimes it happens to innocent people who don’t deserve it. That’s the joke you see? That’s what life is all about. Any terrible thing can happen to you at random, there’s no meaning to it, no higher power deciding where the chips fall. It’s just where shit lands and sometimes you get hit.”   
  
In the distance, he heard sirens approaching and smiled even wider. “You get it don’t you? I can see that you do. Its okay, I understand. You get dressed up like a flying rodent to deal with it and I want to watch the world burn. Both are valid forms of therapy…”  
  
“Why _here_?” the Bat demanded again.  
  
He raised his eyes to the Bat and grinned so wide, it almost split his face in half. “This is where our dance began. You don’t remember? Sure you do. That's why you asked. Some poor schmuck gets in over his head and his so called pals finger him as the mastermind of the whole caper, like he knew shit about anything. Didn’t you get the way he ran off terrified out of his fucking mind how much of a mastermind he was?”  
  
The grip on his lapel wavered slightly and he saw the Bat did remember, the curl of the man's mouth almost revealing horror but not quite.   
  
At the end of the walkway, he saw the appearance of the cops, the red strobes of their squad cars illuminating fragments of the night sky. He turned to the Bat and said quietly, beyond their earshot. “Everything that happens now, everyone who dies, everyone I kill, is on _you. You_ did this. You made me the man I am.”   
  
The Bat’s jaw clenched, shoving him towards the approaching policemen.   
  
“Take him,” the Bat said and it was with some satisfaction that the superior, brittle voice sounded a little shaken.   
  
He turned to the cops and bowed gallantly, “good evening gentlemen. Let me introduce myself! You can call me _the Joker_.”


End file.
